#because i'm a big old baby and editing is apparently not my strong suit

[poiwritesnstuff]

The One Where Richie Patronizes A Bar

Inspired by this post by @coldplaysongsonrepeat.

Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier was finding it harder and harder to frequent bars since he started being actually recognized. Comedy clubs were places of work, and it was generally considered bad practice to vomit where he ate. Clubs were an overpriced headache full of drugs he was too old to keep up with. Sports bars were usually full of the kinds of guys who would want to get chummy and laugh about stupid broads and masturbation jokes, which was masturbatory in and of itself. It was like... mastur-ception. Incept-urbation.

Maybe there was a reason he didn’t write his own material.

So it was with this reasoning that Richie ended up in a dive bar almost forty minutes from his house, nursing a glass of something alcoholic in the corner of a building that a clown car would call cramped. The lighting was dim with burnt out lightbulbs, the bar made of actual wood, and the stool just unbalanced enough for him to nearly fall off twice. In a word, perfection.

It was so dingy and forgotten that Richie hadn’t noticed the faded pride stickers and graffiti until the bartender struck up a conversation with the charming opener of “Should have figured a guy with a name like Trashmouth Tozier would be gay.”

Richie blinked up at her. “Yeah? What tipped you off, my incredible sense of style or the giant bear railing me as we speak?”

“Are you serious? Right in front of my salad?” She asked, her eyes wide with mock shock as she lit a cigarette. Richie laughed

“I think I might love you,” Richie said. “Forget dick, I’m all about you now, baby.”

“Too bad, since mine is bigger than yours,” she said. 

She offered him the cigarette. Richie didn’t normally smoke, but there was something comforting about the act of smoking with this stranger. They continued on like this, throwing nonsense back and forth until Richie was stumbling out of the bar and into an uber she had called for him at 2AM.

Richie woke up every day for a week and when his sexuality wasn’t plastered on the front page of TMZ, he went back. The same redhead was tending bar and smiled when he came in.

“The prodigal son returns! I thought you might have died last week.”

“That was just the warm up, baby. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

--

Four months later, Richie had been coming to this place at least once a week and nobody bothered him except to wrinkle their nose at his shirt. He couldn’t tell if he liked it or hated it, but he couldn’t stay away, so he continued sitting in his corner where nobody could bother him.

On one such night. when he was full of whiskey and contemplation and the clock struck 1, he looked up at his redheaded bartender. “Bess.”

“You know I hate that nickname,” she said lightly, collecting her tip from the last customer to depart.

“Besserly!” he insisted.

“Stop calling me th--” She turned around and saw him sitting with his cheek on the cool surface of the bar. “Richard, that’s disgusting, get your head off the bar.”

“It’s fine.”

Liz filled a glass with water and put it in front of him, and Richie lifted his head just enough to slurp water from the glass.

“Richie, I’m gonna close up early so I have to kick you out soon, okay?”

“No!” He jolted up, panicked. Liz paused in her movements to look at him. “Not just-- I have to say a thing.”

“Okay,” Liz said cautiously. She stopped wiping the bar and watched Richie carefully. “What is it?”

“Okay. I’m... It’s a thing. I just am saying the thing. To you. Because you’re my bartender. Isn’t it funny how people will just say so much shit to their bartenders? Like, I know it’s easy to get a bartender confused with a therapist, you give both of them money to give you shit that makes you feel better and maybe makes you cry a lot-- oh, hey, you’re smiling! I knew I was funny, deep down.”

“You were gonna tell me something, Richie,” Liz prompted, idly wiping down the counter around him. “You don’t have to deflect if you don’t want to say it.”

“No, I just need to do it, you know? I just need to... get it out. Admit it. And then the world will keep turning and I can move on with my life. So, Besserly. Good old Queen Bess. Queen Lizzy-Lizabeth. Lizzy.” He drew in a deep breath, took her hand, and looked her right in the eyes. “Liz, I... I am... Uh. I’m, uh... The-- The thing is that I have to, uh, say that I’m... I’m just really.... I’m...”

His heart clenched so hard that his eyes watered. He wondered if he might be dying. Could be preferable to whatever was about to happen.

“Liz, I’m...” He let go of her hand and dropped his head to the bar, his voice muffled by the bar. “A dick. I’m a dick. Just figured I’d say it. First step is admitting you’re a problem and all.”

Liz patted his head and continued to clean, and Richie’s stomach sunk as he thought that she may have understood him after all.

--

It took a record seven months for someone in the bar to finally approach him.

Richie had to do a double take, and then a triple take when the boy sat down. He had clear, light skin and giant brown eyes, his hair combed down into the dorkiest haircut he had ever seen. His heart hurt at the sight.

“You okay, Richie?” The boy asked, his cheeks round and flushed.

“Uh.” Richie cleared his throat and tried again. He couldn’t work past the whisper of a memory that was begging to be unlocked. “That is... um.”

“You’re Richie Tozier, right? The comedian?” The man tilted his head, and the brief vision Richie was having disappeared. Still, this man was young in a way that made Richie feel every second of his thirty-eight years. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it slid like water through the cracks in his armor and settled into the marrow of his bones. He was suddenly too tired and not drunk enough.

“Debatable, but yes.” Richie smiled halfheartedly. “Richie Tozier, here to entertain.”

“It was just a question, dude,” the young man said, brow furrowed. 

Richie laughed suddenly and finished off his drink, then smiled politely as Liz refilled it. “Sorry, that was weird. You just... You remind me of someone. This boy from my hometown...”

Richie trailed off, studying the man, ignoring the painful clench in his stomach as he returned the gaze with a little heat in his enormous eyes, large and expressive and the stuff of his particularly curious nightmares.

“Yeah?” The man prompted. “Where is he now?”

“Well, I don’t... Don’t really know. Honestly, I don’t remember much of my childhood. It’s mostly, like, blurred pictures and shit.” He laughed. “Well, that sounds fucking stupid. Never mind.”

“It’s not stupid, Richie,” the man said, emphatic.

“Yeah?”

“No, it’s, like, fascinating. I mean, maybe it’s a good thing you don’t remember him.”

“Yeah, see, the thing about that is,” Richie said, sitting up straighter on his wobbly stool, “is that at least people who remember the shit they do, they get to know they don’t want it. The thing about forgetting is that you’ve lost a piece of the puzzle. You don’t get to decide you didn’t want it. Even if it’s super fucked up, you don’t get fucking trigger warnings or whatever. Just blankness. Like whiteout on your brain.”

“Yeah, well, knowing isn’t so much better. I broke up with my boyfriend three weeks ago and I wish I could pile up all his shit and set it on fire. I blocked him on everything and like, deleted all of his pictures on my stuff, but I can’t delete them up here.” The man tapped his temple. “Kind of wish I could. He was such an asshole.” A beat, and then-- “Maybe yours was, too.”

“Yeah, I wish. Having trauma would be great material for my stand-up, I wish I could remember it. Maybe my therapist will tell me after another ten thousand dollars.” He let out a rueful laugh, caught sight of the guy grinning at his joke, and laughed more genuinely.

“So you think this person was your friend?” The man asked. “Someone important?”

“Probably not if I can’t remember him,” Richie said with a shrug. “Must have just been some random dude I hung out with before I moved for college.”

The man gave Richie a searching look that Richie missed, and then put his hand over Richie’s. Richie ought to have reacted; he did not.

“Well, listen, maybe... if you want, we could finish our drinks and get out of here. I live close by.” He paused and lowered his voice to whisper into Richie’s ear. “I could be this guy for you, if you want.”

Richie should have been turned on by this twenty-something virile specimen with puppy-dog eyes and luscious lips breathing at his ear, but all he could feel was panic. He jerked back, though not fast enough to be unkind, and smiled as wide as he could.

“I mean, hey, who could turn down a proposition like that? Damn, you’re good at this, wow, but I kind of gotta get back home, can’t get back too late or else the missus is gonna have my ass for waking up the kids and it’ll really piss off my friend if he wakes up to me fuckin’ his mom so uh yeah sorry I’m just gonna”

He almost sprinted out of the bar, leaving his tab and an astonished, rejected man behind.

Richie leapt out of the uber the moment it got to his mansion and he sprinted inside to the bathroom. Richie conjured up the impossible image of this young man looking at him with want, his features changing just enough to push Richie over the edge with a forgotten name on his lips. 

In the aftermath, Richie panted in the dark, leaning on the counter for support as his legs threatened to give way. He finally lifted his head to look at himself and saw, for a moment, two glowing yellow eyes peering back at him.